


No Matter What

by bette (ferns)



Series: All of Your Faves are Queer-Seriously, All of Them [5]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bisexual Cisco Ramon, Gen, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, but it's mostly the irisco part tbh, cisco is also autistic, cisco is trans and so is iris fuck the police, mostly gen w/ some barriscowest at the end, some internalized stuff, supportive ramon family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 03:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10234679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/bette
Summary: Okay, logically, he knows he should’ve done this much sooner. He knows it for a fact. Okay? He really does know it. But he’s sick and tired of this, of trying to tell them subtly and then they don’t pick up the hints and he’s trying to be blunt he really is-and he’s always been blunt. His mama says it’s because he’s different like Armando was different.He knows he should’ve done this sooner and he tried, he really did. He really, really tried. But he’s so tired of them not picking up on it. And he wants a name, a new name, he can’t stand the one that he has now, with it’s soft feminine connotations that make everyone look at him funny after having only heard his voice (he’s been working on making it sound deeper. It feels really good).





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so Tired of seeing transphobic Ramon family interpretations, especially transphobic Dante, so I wrote this as a plea for you to all just let me rest. There's a bit of internalized biphobia and transphobia but it's mostly confusion on Cisco's part.

Okay, logically, he knows he should’ve done this much sooner. He knows it for a fact. Okay? He really does know it. But he’s sick and tired of this, of trying to tell them subtly and then they don’t pick up the hints and he’s  _ trying  _ to be blunt he really is-and he’s always been blunt. His mama says it’s because he’s different like Armando was different. (It’s not the same brand of different as Dante is different, since Dante is twitchy and washes his hands too much and counts his cereal and taps his hands a certain amount of times and-)

He knows he should’ve done this sooner and he  _ tried,  _ he really did. He really, really tried. But he’s so tired of them not picking up on it. And he wants a name, a new name, he can’t  _ stand  _ the one that he has now, with it’s soft feminine connotations that make everyone look at him funny after having only heard his voice (he’s been working on making it sound deeper. It feels really good).

Sometimes he wonders, though. Because… Because he  _ likes  _ his long hair. He likes how heavy it is and he likes folding it over his fingers and pricking it against his lips and-he  _ likes  _ it. He really, really, really likes it. Does that mean he’s not a boy? Does that mean he’s not a boy, because he likes having long hair and likes painting his nails with Melinda Torres and-and worst of all, he likes  _ boys. _

Of course, he likes girls too, girls like Melinda Torres and Dante’s friend Bella and Armando’s old girlfriend Yvonne and that girl who smiled at him across the hallway and waved whenever she saw him even if he didn’t actually know her name. But he also likes boys. He likes Dante’s best friend Luis, a  _ lot,  _ and there’s that one soccer player when he was little that he tried to give a handful of daisies to after a game, nervous the whole time. And that other boy, Michael, who kissed him on the cheek back in fourth grade.

So if he’s a boy, then he can’t like boys. Which means that he must really be a girl. (Just thinking those words sound so  _ wrong  _ and he  _ hates  _ it.) But he likes girls, too, and girls aren’t supposed to like other girls, either. Even if Melinda whispered something to him the other day about how she may have maybe, possibly, only a little bit, had a tiny crush on one of the high schoolers who went to the school next to theirs. A girl named Maia who supposedly had the prettiest eyes and the nicest smile…

So-so maybe it was okay.  _ Maybe  _ Melinda wouldn’t be mad at him. He hoped.

But his family…

His mama told him that she’d love him no matter what. She said that so often that he had started to suspect that she knew he wasn’t a girl, he’d never been a girl no matter what the doctors and the teachers and the other kids and  _ everyone else  _ always said.

So when it all spills out over dinner with his family, in a mess of tears and begging them to believe him, please, please, please believe him, he’s a  _ boy,  _ he really is-he doesn’t really know what it is that he’s expecting. But he braces for the worst.

Instead, his mama sweeps him into a huge hug and kisses the top of his head. “Oh,  _ mijo,”  _ she sighs, and his heart almost bursts. “I love you no matter what.”

It takes Dante a little longer to adjust-it confirms his theory that his mama already knew. She gives him a home haircut in their bathroom the next day.

And then Dante comes home with a friend who looks at him and smiles and says, “So this is your little brother, huh? What’s your name?”

His heart almost explodes out of his chest. He’s been thinking about names for awhile now, and he’s finally picked one out that he likes. “Francisco.”

“We call him Cisco,” Dante adds, sticking his head into the kitchen and handing a bottle of something electric blue to his friend. He- _ Cisco,  _ that sounds like a good name, a good fitting name-sticks his tongue out at Dante, who smirks. “Or Paco.”

Dante’s friend doesn’t even question it, doesn’t say anything about Cisco’s too-round face and too-squishy arms and legs. The haircut makes him look a little bit more masculine, but it’s not  _ enough  _ for Cisco’s taste.

But hearing his new name spoken aloud makes it feel like there are fireworks shooting off inside of his body.

* * *

Cisco stared down Harrison Wells-no, not Harrison Wells. Eobard Thawne. The person who had said that he saw him as a  _ son  _ before  _ vibrating  _ a hand into his  _ heart.  _ Of course, Thawne couldn’t see him because Cisco was the only one in the Cortex and Thawne was down in the Pipeline.

“I didn’t know what to think,” he said softly. “Not at first. I mean-I kept having the dreams, but-but you hired me. You said you loved me. You  _ paid  _ for my top surgery and you made sure I was on hormones and you-” His voice broke. “I trusted you. I stood by you. But I’m never going to trust you again.”

Thawne looked up at the camera, and for a moment Cisco thought that he had heard him. But then Thawne looked back down, and Cisco’s shoulders slumped.

Pulling out his phone, he called Dante and left a message asking if they (Dante had discovered that they were nonbinary about six months after Cisco had started working for STAR Labs after calling Cisco in a panic) wanted to go out and get drunk as fuck tonight and cry together and pointedly not talk about Armando.

Or maybe they  _ will  _ end up talking about Armando.

Cisco can’t help but wonder what will happen if Barry rewrites the timeline. It’ll send a ripple through the timestream, he knows that deep in his gut, and Cisco can’t help but wonder if maybe it will change things so Armando isn’t dead.

(Armando would’ve supported him, Cisco just knows it. He’s sure of it. Armando always told him that he would always be proud of him, that he wanted to set a good example for him, that Cisco had too much potential to go to waste.)

But what Cisco  _ does  _ know that this won’t change. Being a boy-that’s permanent. That’s something Cisco will always be.

* * *

“Funny,” the mirror image of him sneers, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

All Cisco can do is stare. He looks like-wow. Wow. He looks… Incredible. Cisco knows he’s bi, and he also knows that he’s not attracted to himself because that’s just a little bit weird, but what he  _ did  _ care about was the fact that his doppelganger looked, well, like a man. Cisco passed well enough to keep his hair long so he could stim with it, but this guy-holy shit.

And his double-Reverb, he calls himself, apparently-looks like he might be thinking the same thing. Something inside of Cisco glows a little bit.

* * *

Dante. Dante. Dante. Dante’s dead.

Cisco wants to throw up, having to misgender his sibling in front of everyone, but he was the only one Dante was out to and he can’t just-

* * *

“Hey,” Cisco says, shifting nervously from foot to foot as he stands in front of Iris and Barry’s door. “I-I don’t want to interrupt, but-”

Iris rolls her eyes and takes his hand, pulling him into the apartment and closing the door behind him. He talked to her a lot after Dante died; she’s learned to recognize when he needs to talk about it and when he just needs to sit and cuddle with something, relishing in the deep pressure contact. Once Iris figured out how much he loved having his hair toyed with, it was all over. They may have started out bonding over being trans, but it had evolved into something much more than that.

Barry’s sitting on the couch, looking nervous and terrified. Cisco ignores him as Iris settles him down on the couch. There’s a movie paused-something Cisco saw awhile ago when it came out but hasn’t rewatched since. At Iris’s nod, Barry presses play, still looking at Cisco like he’s worried he’s going to end up breaking him just by thinking about him wrong.

Some part of Cisco, the vicious part, which seems to be most of him nowadays, tells him that that’s a good thing. That Barry deserves it for what he’s done.

He’s going to work on forgiving. But not right now, with the pain of Dante’s death (the apparition looked  _ just like them,  _ it somehow looked just like them and Cisco couldn’t-he just couldn’t do it) still fresh in his head.

Iris squeezes his hand. “We’re always here if you want to talk.”

Cisco squeezes back, a little bit tighter. A silent acknowledgement. An unspoken  _ I know  _ and a silent  _ we have to stick together. _

There’s a bit of an  _ I love you I love you I love you  _ in it. Sometimes he’s jealous of Barry and Iris for what they have together. He wants that. But he’s not sure if he wants to be them or be with them or some mix of the two or-and not Barry, not anymore, not really. Maybe some day. Sometime soon.

Cisco’s glad he has Iris, though. Someone to cling to in the storm.

The rain falls harder outside.


End file.
